Cohousing-L Mailing List: dish sterilization

[Rob Sandelin (floriferous]

I can tell you from 14 years of experience that our level of illness as a
community is no greater or less than the average home, and we certainly do
NOT sterilize our dishes with bleach, lock them up for safe keeping, etc.
The dishes get run through the dish washer, using a non-bleach dish soap,
and then stacked on a counter. Clean Dishes are not a very good vector for
viral-bacterial infection, the surfaces dry out too fast. Sponges on the
other hand are bacteria farms, the moist interiors breed bacteria at amazing
rates and we don't use them.

The recent thread of dish sterilization, with references to EBola, SARS is
an example of how groups can get all worked up over somebodies unreasonable
fears, and make decisions based on unrealistic worse case scenarios. Food
particles grow bacteria. Diseases like the common cold, SARS, etc come from
virus'. According to our health Department food specialist, Silverware is
the primary vector of dish bacteria, especially forks, which can have food
particles trapped between the tines. Any decent  dishwashing  removes the
food, thus the bacteria has nothing to eat and grow on.

Living in a community, you have more access to viral agents from close
associating with more people, and kids are good vectors for spreading virus'
around since they are less conscious of it. If you live in fear of virus',
you should probably not live in a community. If you are seriously immune
deficient, living in a community with lots of kids is probably a bad idea.
At Sharingwood, when people are sick they are encouraged to not come to
community dinner and meals are brought to them, but the kids still play with
each other and trade colds, etc.

I would not waste a lot of community energy on keeping the dishes sterile
beyond normal standards. You would be better off spending that energy
teaching your kids about how colds and flu germs get spread.

Rob Sandelin
South Snohomish County at the headwaters of Ricci Creek
Sky Valley Environments  <http://www.nonprofitpages.com/nica/SVE.htm>
Field skills training for student naturalists
Floriferous [at] msn.com

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